Altered Photo of CWC Meet Shared to Take a Dig at Congress Party

The 2019 photo of a Congress Working Committee was edited to include a mocking remark on a banner in the background.

A photo of senior Indian National Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is being shared by social media users against the background of an image with accompanying text which reads 'Chor Group Meeting' (thief group meeting).

The image is being shared taking a dig at the grand old party mocking them for 'inadvertently revealing the truth'.

But we found that the image, which is originally from a 2019 meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) where the party rejected Rahul Gandhi's offer to resign as party president, was edited to add the text.

CLAIM

The photo was also shared by Dr Richa Rajpoot, head of social media for the Uttar Pradesh wing of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, who later took her tweet down.

More claims can be seen here, here. and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We ran a reverse image search on the photograph and were led to news reports with the same image.

The photograph matched the one in a 2019 report by Zee News Hindi, which talked about the Congress Working Committee (CWC) picking a new leader.

The photograph in this report did not contain the words 'Chor Group Meeting'.

We also found the same photo on news agency PTI's photo archives. The photo was taken on 25 May 2019.

CWC meetings were held after Congress' defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when Rahul Gandhi had offered to resign from the position of the party president claiming responsibility for the loss.

Evidently, the words 'Chor Group Meeting' were edited onto an old photo of a CWC meeting.

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